TeenyReef's 10g Fusion - ATO Disaster

[Lula_Mae]

On 7/18/2017 at 3:09 AM, teenyreef said:

Thanks! I often think about the 90 but with a wedding to pay for next year it's just not an option right now. 

Lol, if it was me I probably would never have figured it out!

 

I'm hoping to get a July FTS this week, things got too crazy last weekend. 

Gee, you'd think weddings are expensive or something!

[Pjanssen]

7 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

Gee, you'd think weddings are expensive or something!

As much as you think it's going to be, no matter your budget, double it!

[Lula_Mae]

29 minutes ago, Pjanssen said:

As much as you think it's going to be, no matter your budget, double it!

And if you can't afford to double it, scale down or do something unconventional lol.  I did a brunch reception just for this reason.

[kimberbee]

15 hours ago, Pjanssen said:

As much as you think it's going to be, no matter your budget, double it!

QFFT! We did literally double our budget.  Thankfully, Nick has the option for overtime!

 

15 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

And if you can't afford to double it, scale down or do something unconventional lol.  I did a brunch reception just for this reason.

I love brunch! 

[Lula_Mae]

12 hours ago, kimberbee said:

QFFT! We did literally double our budget.  Thankfully, Nick has the option for overtime!

 

I love brunch! 

Me too!  Breakfast foods are my favorite!  We kept it simple but I wish I could've done an omelette station or something... nom nom nom!  As it was, we had an abundance of cake from Publix (fruit filling!  Yum!) and lots of pies from local bakeries and restaurants.  Banana split pie, anyone?

[teenyreef]

I love breakfast for dinner 

[schgr.cube]

1 minute ago, teenyreef said:

I love breakfast for dinner 

Ugh, it is the best. We recently discovered breakfast pizza as well...

[Lula_Mae]

5 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

I love breakfast for dinner 

 

3 minutes ago, schgr.cube said:

Ugh, it is the best. We recently discovered breakfast pizza as well...

Me too!  Nom nom nom... bacon, eggs, grits (don't be hatin' on Southern foods now ya'll! ) pancakes, biscuits...although breakfast pizza sounds interesting!

[teenyreef]

Oh yeah, bacon and eggs and pancakes for dinner and I'm in heaven. 

And I've always loved cold pizza from the night before for breakfast. Zero prep time, too! 

[teenyreef]

We've been buying Shetland Sheepdogs from the same breeder for 27 years now, and we've always had two dogs at a time. So when she told us last week that she was raising the last litter of puppies before she retires, we knew we were going to have to go over the two dog quota. 

Last weekend we picked out our choice, and we'll be picking up little Murphy on Sunday. Can't wait!  

 

[Lula_Mae]

15 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

We've been buying Shetland Sheepdogs from the same breeder for 27 years now, and we've always had two dogs at a time. So when she told us last week that she was raising the last litter of puppies before she retires, we knew we were going to have to go over the two dog quota. 

Last weekend we picked out our choice, and we'll be picking up little Murphy on Sunday. Can't wait!  

 

[fishfreak0114]

46 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

We've been buying Shetland Sheepdogs from the same breeder for 27 years now, and we've always had two dogs at a time. So when she told us last week that she was raising the last litter of puppies before she retires, we knew we were going to have to go over the two dog quota. 

Last weekend we picked out our choice, and we'll be picking up little Murphy on Sunday. Can't wait!  

 

Cuteness overload! 

[teenyreef]

We got him! 

 

 

[Pinner Reef]

There should be laws against something that damn cute. Imma steal him

[schgr.cube]

Dawe 

[Pjanssen]

awe. how are you going to dedicate all of your free time to your tanks with him around? Thats not right! You better send him to me right away!

 

 

[ReefWeeds]

On 6/23/2017 at 0:26 AM, teenyreef said:

I've been a bad blogger, just no time to keep up! But things are finally starting to calm down a bit, all the graduations are done and the family is starting to relax and enjoy the summer. 

 

The tank has been doing pretty well but I had a minor disaster the other night while changing the skimmer cup. As I lifted the cup up, I knocked the gooseneck for the light out of place, and the light wasn't tightly clamped to the tank. Next thing I knew the light was in the tank 

 

Fortunately, since all the high voltage stuff is in the driver box, outside the tank, it didn't hurt any corals or fish. But I had to send the light back to Dave at Nanobox to check it out because it stopped working. The bad news is, it needed a new driver board. The good news is, Dave looked at it right away. Even though I just sent it in on Monday, it will be back on Saturday, all fixed. In the meantime, I've got my old PAR 30 bulb hanging over the tank just to give the corals some light.

 

Since Dave had the light anyway, I asked him to upgrade the LED array to the latest version, which will replace the old warm white LEDS with mint LEDS. From what I've seen and heard this is a great upgrade because the mints can provide higher PAR without washing out the color, plus the overall color balance is better. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it looks!

 

I also asked Dave to put on a longer gooseneck, to provide a little more clearance for the skimmer cup... 

 

Fortunately, I took a few pictures last week before the light took a bath. I have lost a couple of the acros that I put in, but the others are still doing well. One of the ones was lost because I found an aiptasia underneath it after removing the plug, but I'm not sure why the others went bad. It may just be due to the tank still being a little immature and unbalanced after the soft reboot.

 

I've also stopped running gfo completely, and I'm just doing PhosphateRX to control phosphates. I've also stopped running carbon, at least for now. The idea is to keep nitrates at a natural level (about 10) while keeping phosphates low for improved color. So far so good - as you can see from the pictures, the acans and other softies are quite happy, and the remaining acros seem to be doing fine.

 

I took this top top down right before feeding time:

 

Here are the acans after feeding. I love how they get all puffy and full of food

 

Doug, the leopard toby puffer:

 

You can see the ORA Pearlberry acro just below the red monti cap, it's doing fine.

 

A couple more acros, along with the chalice. A few days after I took this picture, I lost the smaller acro for No Apparent Reason

 

California Tort (left), and Rainbow Tenuis Chef (right). The tenuis started receding after this, so I pulled out the remains, and it's recovering in the 40g tank. That's when I found an aiptasia underneath the plug, which I think was causing the problem.

 

Zoa garden #1:

 

Zoa garden #2:

 

That's it for now, I hope to update more frequently from now on!

I'm sooooo behind - I am still in May! But wanted to ask: how high above the water do you place your light? 

 

These photos are seriously amazing.

[kimberbee]

Murphy!!! 

[Christopher Marks]

Congrats on the cute new pup @teenyreef!

[Weetabix7]

19 hours ago, teenyreef said:

We got him! 

 

 

 

I just want to smooooosh him with love!!!

On 7/13/2017 at 1:46 PM, teenyreef said:

Currently I run filter floss, and then carbon. Sometimes I run gfo too, but lately I've been using PhosphateRX instead. It's easier to control than the gfo, which is always getting exhausted, making the phosphates jump up and down. 

Skimmer is the Eshopps Nano, and for salt, I've been switching around a bit. Currently a blend of IO and Aquaforest reef salt. 

 

Ok, I gotta ask real quick, how do you use the GFO in an inTank basket?

Asking because I am literally getting ready to try the same thing right now, but I thought you were only "supposed to" use that in a reactor.

[teenyreef]

Thanks everyone! We are having so much fun with him 

Here's a quick video of him playing with his bone, the first night we got him.

 

[ninjamyst]

soooo cute!  my wife had shelties all her childhood and she LOVES them.  her allergies got really bad when she got older so her sister took care of her shelties for a bit. 

[TinyOcean]

Hi Teeny! Love the video. I have a question for you. I just got a blue dot puffer also called a sharp nosed Toby yesterday and I was wondering how things were going for you with Doug's teeth? Mine ( Norbert ) is eating Mysis like a pig but his mouth is very small so I was going to get a bunch of small snails for my tank and also try cut up pieces of shrimp with shell on. Any other suggestions? 

[Sharbuckle]

That friggin puppy is so god damn cute.

 

[teenyreef]

1 hour ago, ninjamyst said:

soooo cute!  my wife had shelties all her childhood and she LOVES them.  her allergies got really bad when she got older so her sister took care of her shelties for a bit. 

We've had shelties now for 27 years. They're great dogs, gentle, playful, smart, loyal, energetic and cute. And as long as they get a reasonable level of training and care, it's fairly easy to control the undesirable sheltie behaviors like excessive barking.